Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 23: Phase One

Chapter 23: Phase One

The bell sent everyone moving. Candidates crowded into the tiered stands surrounding a vast sealed arena, while the senior examiner from the earlier briefing climbed onto a platform overlooking the floor.

"Phase One," she announced.

The entire yard went quiet.

"Basic Command Evaluation."

Lights came on beneath her, revealing an obstacle course that wound across the length of the arena. Padded arms swung over sections of the path. Command marks had been painted onto the ground between gaps and shifting barriers. At the far end stood a single articulated dummy.

"You will direct your beast through this course," the examiner said. "Power is not being tested today. You can show off your monsters later. This phase measures five things."

The screens displayed the list.

[Phase One — Metrics]

[Obedience]

[Reflexes]

[Coordination]

[Response Speed]

[Tamer–Beast Bond]

"A powerful beast is worthless if you can’t control it," she continued, her tone as flat as before. "Actually, it’s worse than worthless. That kind of beast gets people killed. The Association will not hand you anything until it knows whether your beast listens to you."

Her gaze moved coldly across the tiers.

"Many of you are about to find out that it doesn’t."

Jin remained motionless.

He studied everything below. The swinging pads. The command points. The spacing and timing. The dummy moving at the end.

The tight feeling in his chest eased and settled.

Obedience. Reflexes. Coordination. Response speed. Bond.

For the last week, he had done almost nothing except drill those exact five things into a sleeping lizard. One clean repetition after another.

Without meaning to, Jin had optimized for the precise test the examiners had built.

Nobody else in the arena knew.

"...Huh." He kept his voice low. "It’s a movement-check level."

A small part of him almost felt guilty.

Almost.

Candidates entered the arena one at a time, and the course tore through them.

Nobody was literally slaughtered. Their dignity took most of the damage.

Strong beasts kept stepping onto the floor with proud handlers, then leaving after proving that strength and control had very little to do with each other.

A Bronze boar rushed the opening obstacle and ignored every order to stop. It drove straight through a barrier it was meant to wait behind, ending the run with a disqualification.

Later, a sleek Silver cat-beast reached the halfway point before one of the padded arms frightened it. The beast bolted toward the wall. Its handler shouted command after command, and the cat ignored every one. The bond estimate was terrible.

An Inner Core kid with expensive training did better. His beast completed the course cleanly and earned a strong score. It was capable, disciplined, and thoroughly drilled.

Money clearly helped.

Still, the run looked rigid. There was always half a second between the handler speaking and the beast responding. It followed instructions like a script instead of reading the person beside it.

The examiner’s point proved itself again and again.

Owning a monster did not make someone a Tamer. Half these candidates had never convinced their beasts to trust them.

Jin barely paid attention to who failed.

The layout mattered more.

The third pad swung on a two-count. The fourth command mark sat one beat too close to the gap. That was why people kept losing control there. They waited too long to call the stop, and their beasts carried themselves over the edge.

At the finish, the dummy returned to position on a rhythm.

Jin tracked each hazard, every timing change, and all the small traps designed to expose a poor bond. Before his number came, he already knew the course from beginning to end.

Then the call sounded.

"Candidate 314. Astor. Iron-tier."

Snickers travelled through the tiers. Everyone had seen the scan, and the crowd was ready to watch the joke play out.

With Glitch riding on his shoulder, Jin stepped onto the arena floor.

The stands had the mood of an audience waiting for a clown to find the banana peel.

The examiner checked her readout. Iron. Rank 1. One-star.

She looked bored before Jin had managed three steps.

He couldn’t spot Elsa or Arthur from where he stood, but their presence still pressed at the edge of his awareness. Elsa would be somewhere past the barrier, clenching her fists until the knuckles went white. Arthur was probably praying in silence to gods that had never answered him once.

None of that existed down here.

There was only the course, Jin, and the small warm body resting against his shoulder.

He crouched at the starting line and placed Glitch on the marked spot. A pair of golden eyes looked up at him.

Jin had no grand speech prepared. He wasn’t going to start talking about fate or destiny either. He had never given a dramatic speech in his life, and this was hardly the moment to begin.

"Same as practice," he said.

Glitch chirped once.

They started.

The buzzer sounded, and Glitch trotted away from the mark.

There was no explosive burst of speed. Anyone hoping for one got the sight of a tiny black lizard heading into a lethal obstacle course at a steady pace.

Glitch didn’t overpower anything. He broke no obstacles and offered no roar.

He simply moved well.

As the first padded arm swung down, Glitch lowered himself and slipped beneath it. His timing hit the two-count exactly. No early flinch, no late scramble. One compact drop of his body carried him through before the pad completed its arc.

The laughter in the stands weakened.

At the first command mark, Jin began to say, "Hold."

Glitch planted himself while Jin was still on the h.

He waited without moving.

The dangerous command mark came next, placed close enough to the gap that a dozen candidates had already failed there.

Jin gave the order early and trusted all the practice behind it.

Glitch stopped cleanly. His nose hung right over the edge, with the gap opening barely an inch beyond his feet.

He turned before Jin finished the word. He stopped before the full command reached him.

Every movement stayed compact and useful. Glitch wasted nothing and never panicked. He passed from obstacle to obstacle without breaking rhythm.

The arena gradually fell silent.

On the platform, the examiner abandoned her slouch and sat upright.

Whispers spread through the tiers now, but nobody sounded amused anymore.

"...That’s an Iron?"

"Did you see the timing?"

"Why does it stop before he even—"

Among the quieting candidates, Lucian Vale had stopped preparing.

His attention had locked onto the little black lizard crossing the arena floor. Nothing distracted him from it. The focus was complete, sharp, and dangerous.

Jin noticed none of that.

He wasn’t watching the stands.

His eyes stayed on the final obstacle.

The articulated dummy activated when Glitch reached the end of the course.

Jin had already measured its normal swing. It followed a steady rhythm, sending one slow, threatening arm across the path to test whether a beast could recognise danger and evade it. A dramatic finish, nothing more.

This time, the dummy broke the pattern.

Its arm came down much faster than it had for the others.

Maybe the difficulty increased for later candidates. Or perhaps the examiners had a harsher setting reserved for beasts that seemed worth testing.

Whatever the reason, the strike swept toward Glitch well ahead of the expected beat. It was exactly the kind of sudden attack that left a hatchling frozen where it stood.

Most Iron beasts would have locked up.

A gasp passed through the tiers before the arm landed. The crowd was already bracing for the little lizard to be flattened.

Jin stayed relaxed.

He gave Glitch one word.

"Dodge."

Glitch began moving before Jin completed the d.

A week of repetition came together at once.

Evasive Step, five percent and rising.

The hatchling dropped his weight and rolled smoothly into the evasive motion. He slipped beneath the falling arm with millimetres to spare, tail snapping outward to hold his balance as his body twisted through the opening.

The dummy struck empty air.

On the other side, Glitch landed squarely on all four feet. He faced forward, sat down, and waited for his next instruction.

Nothing came from the audience.

The entire arena had gone silent.

A deep, ringing silence that reached every tier.

Then the exam display changed. Huge text appeared above the floor, large enough for every candidate and examiner to see, along with every whale, every free player, and every family waiting beyond the barrier.

[Command Response: Excellent]

[Reflex Grade: Excellent]

[Synchronization Estimate: Abnormally High]

The examiner stared at the last result.

Her boredom had vanished. A sharp, focused concern replaced it, and she immediately leaned toward the aide beside her to speak in a quick murmur.

Jin crossed the arena and crouched with one arm extended.

Glitch climbed onto it, chirped proudly, then bit Jin’s collar with the satisfaction of a beast who thought the whole thing had gone perfectly.

Jin scratched him beneath the chin as though nothing interesting had happened.

Boring. Routine. Expected.

His expression stayed flat, but his gaze had caught on the third line and refused to leave.

Command Response and Reflex were fine. Good training could explain those.

But "Abnormally High" synchronization?

A hundred candidates whispered while Jin walked away, and one silver-haired prodigy watched him carry a certified Iron-tier paperweight off the arena floor.

"...Yeah," Jin murmured to Glitch as they stepped out. "That last word’s going to be a problem."